Its Garbage day here.....whats this have to do with finishing???

Rob Keeble

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Location
GTA Ontario Canada
Well simple. I know many places dont recycle however we do and it results in greater awareness of opportunities to repurpose some of the containers that normally just go straight through to the trash.

Now many moons ago Larry stopped by and taught me the basics to spraying and i have not ceased to be grateful for his lessons then.
It took a while for me to have sink in what he was on about, figured after he must have thought "gee these Canucks or exSafricans must be thick or slow" but hey i finally got it. :)

So i want to share some tips with u and keep the knowledge alive its a saving and tool right under our noses and darn useful for all sorts of other uses.

1) Glass containers from pasta sauces or jams or u name it. Clean them up soak off the label and stash them in a safe place. I used to use them for storage but not anymore they can drop and break so but as a storage for solvent man u cannot go wrong.
Recently i did a car overhaul and needed storage for all sorts of solvents and liquid waste and used up several bottles. In our location we have a hazardous waste depot where we take used oil old paint stripper or whatever chemicals. They prefer the original container to identify it but hey they also take my glass bottles and i tell em whats inside.

2) Plastic peanut bottles...we used to go through this stuff thankfully i got the number i needed while the going was good. The flow has dried up since the kids moved out but for years these darn good clear solid caps containers just went to recycling.

3) Old spray bottles. since i do the grocery shopping i buy refils but from time to time Linda does it and she dont so when the product is done i use them for water spray bottles for when i am sharpening. Have tried it for raising grain but too much spray in my view so have yet to find the idea one for that application.

4. Cardboard. Now this is also something we break down and have to cut up or bail. Most is not worth keeping. And when Larry first taught me this i really battled to get my mind around where i would find sheets big enough. But low and behold it did not take long for me to find it right in my hands as leftover from a purchase like say a new Tv or genrator box or garden cushion storage trunk box and then to spot the boxes at one of our grocery chains where they make them available for customers to carry the groceries out with rather than pay for bags.

The thing is once u open your eyes to being aware of this stuff sudenly there is no shortage of supply and best of all its free and when used disposable again.
So how do i use card board. Well first up when setting up the spray gun pattern and testing to see how much spray is coming out. But i recently had a brainwave...yeah it took me a while....lying under the car on the asphalt driveway was wrecking good t shirt after T shirt and edging me towards divorce. I could not get the car high enough for my dolly so lying on dolly was out with my stomach. But hey lay a large piece of cardboard down and you can slide around like an eel well in my case maybe a large sea lion lol.
It also works as a bench protector if u are like me and use your bench for whatever. But for that i mostly use the card type paper rolls the roofers use for I dunno what but i get it at the depot and a roll lasts a long time.

So before you just toss out the garbage take note of what is getting thrown out, in my case its easy for me, i see to our recycling and garbage so i go through it before i put it on the sidewalk, in fact i even save the good stuff before then.

Here is a pic of my haul from last nights cleaning out the fridge for garbage day....sadly us empty nesters are struggling to adapt to reduced demand for food since the scavaging kids left. Read larger tool budget coming online. :) WHEN....someone accepts the reality and savings kick in. ;)

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By the way many solvents will settle and clear if u let them rest in a jar like this then u can reuse by carefully pouring off.
Handy if u want to mix ur own shellac too....never done it but its on my list to try.

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Good stuff Rob, I use them to mix up my home brew of danish oil, throw some spirits in one to soak a brush, etc. I have a hunk of cardboard I put over the bench when I'm spaying rattle can laquer or paint. It's pretty well covered and hard now. Need to find another one.

I'm gonna show my wife this thread so she'll see I'm not the only one that takes glass containers out of the recycling bin at the house when she puts them in there. :wave:
 
Here is a pic of my haul from last nights cleaning out the fridge for garbage day....sadly us empty nesters are struggling to adapt to reduced demand for food since the scavaging kids left. Read larger tool budget coming online. :) WHEN....someone accepts the reality and savings kick in. ;)

Has your wife figured out how to cook for only two people yet or are you just filling in for the missing boys?:)
 
That is not funny ;) because coming from the place i grew up I really cant handle waste of anything especially food and water. The consequence is i eat something when i dont really want to just so it dont go to waste. But my "new" plan is making a song and dance of throwing it in the bin....so she was not impressed when i threw her really great cupcakes out after son went back to school this past weekend. Next i will do the same with half of the plate of food she dishes up for me and perhaps she will get the message. She is old school so its ingrained to feed her man till she kills him lol.

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It seems that any place I've ever lived, we put the garbage out on Thursday for Friday pick up. Even though the garbage trucks work every weekday, our pickup is always Friday morning. The rest of the week they must just drive around, deadheading.

We keep two recycling bins, one for paper and cardboard, and one for containers. I throw most stuff out, as storing small jars of paint that I may never use again doesn't work for me. I even throw away the odd screws that are left after a project. Back in the day our parents used to straighten bent nails and put them back in the box, but I'd rather not.

Ya know, if you stopped eating those peanuts, you could lose that stomach and use the dolly... :D
 
All great suggestions Rob. :thumb:

I need to setup a bin for the glass stuff to go to the recycling bin at the community collection site. They don't take it in the street recycle anymore as they had too many complains/claims for broken glass in the streets. They did go to taking just about any type of plastic now. We even have a large bin with wheels now for our recycling. I typically have the recycle container full every week and a bag (maybe 2) in the 90 gallon trash can each week depending on if we had to throw stuff out of the fridge, or if something got stinky in the kitchen trash and had to go out.

I too keep a collection of cardboard for the same uses as well as scraps of carpet I get from time to time for laying on the shop floor working on the car.

I'm pretty conscious of what containers I buy our food products in. I really don't like buying in plastic, but I have had to change my mindset since we recycle it and not tin cans (from canned food). We buy the milk in the glass container from a local dairy and return the bottles for a deposit, which we've done for years.

As for the cooking for two, I'm well aware of that. We just recently bought a new chest type deep freeze. I had it in my mind that it would be too expensive to keep one running year round, wrong, tag says about only about $30 per year. So I've gotten where I'll make larger meals of the things that re-heat well and freeze them for quick meals during the week. This does frustrate my wife sometimes, as I usually end up freezing what she had thought she was taking for her lunch the next day. ;)

I actually recycled some wood and pallets this week. I keep a 60 gallon barrel or two around, which the unusable scraps go in to burn in the wood stove, the rest got cut up into usable sizes and stacked for projects. I don't worry about removing the nails as I fish them out of the ashes with a magnet later. I usually have a bucket for bent nails and the nails that came from the ashes for scrapping. I typically have a small load of stuff that I give to a metal scrapper each year (via CL, just list as Free) as I'm purging out stuff that has accumulated. I probably could make a little money taking it to the scrap yard myself, but would spend the profits in gas and time. This way the scrapper gets some money and I save the time taking it.

Next year I think I'm going to put in a couple of rain barrels for watering the flowers beds and topping off the fish pond during the heat of summer. I have a couple of places where they can be put out of sight, to keep SWMBO happy and still be accessible.
 
so she was not impressed when i threw her really great cupcakes out after son went back to school this past weekend. Next i will do the same with half of the plate of food she dishes up for me and perhaps she will get the message. She is old school so its ingrained to feed her man till she kills him lol.

You know most of that freezes just fine and saves good for another day (and I see Darren beat me to it) :p

We buy food and similar largely in bulk so there is generally very little trash unless we're traveling or something where we end up with a bit of "convenience" items that tend to be packaged small. The majority is amazon packaging - back to that cardboard which is indeed handy for all sorts of stuff (we're on a "monthly saver" program there where they ship us stuff you normally use once a month - like shampoo, soap, etc.. kinda convenient). Make most of our own jams, etc.. (not that we use a lot) so the jars generally get re-used for that just the (canning) lid is tossed.

I'm always astounded at how much trash most folks generate.
 
My BIL saves everything metal, throws it in a can and every so often takes the cans to salvage and gets money for it. I have started doing the same only I give my full buckets to him to add to his. I live too far away from any salvage places to even pay for the diesel I'd burn getting there. I mean he collect everything that is metal, old nails, screws, cut off from his car workings. Last time I disposed of a computer I took it all apart and saved the carcuses for him. By the way, I kept all the tiny screws and nuts from them, surprising the uses I have found for them. I like recycling, why not reuse what ever we can? Makes sense to me. I really don't like to keep glass jars in my workshop though, I always seem to manage to drop some.

Big sheets of cardboard are put under the cars so I catch oil drips when I change oil. They (the engineers) seem to delight in putting a frame crossmember right where the oil will hit it when you drain the oil out of the pan. Them that oil that you can't reach to eventually drips on the floor. Just like they put the oil filters on the side of the block so it will run down the block when you change it.
 
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Our community has a recycling program, but we have to take the stuff to one of two centers in town. We bought three twenty gallon bins to separate it into glass, paper and P-A-T (plastic, aluminum, tin). I keep small glass jars along with 1lb margarine tubs and small plastic yogurt cups for use in the shop.

As to leftovers, we either freeze them or use them in a timely manner. Very little goes to waste, however quite a bit goes to my waist!
 
You know, our son is on deployment and one of his stops was in South Korea. It was one of the only phone calls she's received from him in about 6 months. The only thing she could make out from the static was "there's no trash cans here". He mentioned he had to carry his trash around with him all day until arriving back on ship.

I did some googling later that day and found that they really don't have a good trash infrastructure there. There are even sites dedicated to locating trash cans within the city. Will be posts on it stating "In the back of the store, under the such and such shelf to the right, there is a small trash can, but dont' let anyone see you use it. :)

http://seoulistic.com/living-in-korea/trash-in-korea-everything-you-need-to-know-about-garbage/
 
I've had the same large piece of cardboard hanging around my shop for years. Most of the time it's covering the top of my tablesaw. It is covered with glue drippings and finish overspray, but still does its job. My "spray booth" for turned pieces is also cardboard. (It's the TranSport chair box in this photo.)

Finishing%20Booth.jpg
 
Good stuff Rob. I have a re-purposed cardboard box with the flaps taped up to make it taller that I use for a trash can in the shop. You have probably seen in pictures since 2005. It just got replaced the other day and I was almost sad to see it go. I too save spaghetti sauce and peach jars, plastic containers of all sorts (I got some grief for the shaving cream caps I saved and used to store drum sander paper . . .

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It sometimes takes me a few weeks to fill my trash can that gets hauled out to the street but, my recycle bin goes out almost every week.
 
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Interesting how we're all pretty much on the same page with these things, and how much we've bought into recycling and reducing.
I always have several big pieces of cardboard in the barn for outdoor creeper jobs. They'll even dry out for later use after lying on the wet ground or snow (Murphy says tire chains almost always have to be put on after dark in a driving blizzard).
My personal hoarding item is the clear plastic jars that nuts come in at Costco. (Same side effect as Rob's peanut butter too, I'm afraid) They make great canisters for a variety of shop supplies.
 
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